Skip to Main Content

CSE Quick Citation Guide

This guide contains some examples of common citation formats in CSE Style (Council of Science Editors, formerly called the CBE Council of Biology Editors).

N-Y System: Articles

Important Elements:

  • Author (last name, initials only for first & middle names.  List all names for up to 10 authors, if more than 10 list the first 10 authors and then “et al.” or “and others”)
  • Title of article (capitalize only the first word of title and subtitle, and proper nouns)
  • Title of publication abbreviated (if possible use ISO abbreviations used by PubMed)
  • Date of publication of article (year only for scholarly journals; year and month for magazines; year, month and day for daily or newspapers publications)
  • Volume and issue number
  • Page numbers of article

The basic format would be:

Last Name Initials[period] Year[period]Article title[period] Abbreviated Journal Title[period] Volume (issue)[colon] 1st page number[hyphen]last page number[period]

Online Material

The basic rules for citing do not differ for internet items from what is required for print.  Simply listing a URL is not sufficient

All the publication information should also be listed as in the examples below
Add [accessed date] after the journal name
Add the URL  at the end

Examples

Online Scholarly Article

Savage E, Ramsay M, White J, Beard S, Lawson H, Hunjan R, Brown D. 2005. Mumps outbreaks across England and Wales in 2004: observational study. BMJ. [accessed 2007 May 31]; 330(7500):1119-1120. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/330/7500/1119 doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7500.119.

Article in a scholarly journal

Cox J, Engstrom RT. 2001. Influence of the spatial pattern of conserved lands on the persistence of a large population of red-cockaded woodpeckers. Biol Conserv. 100(1): 137-150.

Article in Conference Proceedings

Lee DJ, Bates D, Dromey C, Xu X, Antani S. c2003. An imaging system correlating lip shapes with tongue contact patterns for speech pathology research. In: Krol M, Mitra S, Lee DJ, editors. CBMS 2003. Proceedings of the 16th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems; 2003 Jun 26027; New York. Los Alamitos (CA): IEEE Computer Society; P.307-313.

Technical Report

Feller BA. 1981. Health characteristics of persons with chronic activity limitation, United States, 1979. Hyattsville (MD): National Center for Health Statistics (US); Report No.: VHS-SER-10/137. Available from: NTIS, Springfield, VA; PB88-228622.

Article in a magazine (include volume # if given)

Losos JB. 2001 Mar. Evolution: A lizard's tale. Sci Am. 284(3): 64-69.

Article in a daily newspaper

Yoon CK. 2000 Dec 26. DNA clues improve outlook for red wolf. New York Times. Sect. F:10 (col. 1).